Tag: CarbonSequestration

Millions of marine floating islands, each as large as a football field and powered by sunlight, could harvest carbon dioxide and produce enough fuel to power the worlds planes, ships, trains and lorries. These solar methanol farms, proposed by scientists from Switzerland and Norway, could even eliminate all global fossil fuel emissions.

Solar panels covering the 100m-diameter islands would provide energy for combining carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methanol – a compound that can either be used directly as a fuel or serve as a feedstock for petrochemical products. A chemical plant housed in a moored ship would provide the ingredients for this reaction: hydrogen from water splitting and carbon dioxide harvested from seawater. The area underneath the islands could even be used for fish farming.

A cluster of 70 islands could produce 1.75 tonnes of methanol per hour, the team calculates. Whilst this is productive, it could also be seen as dangerous. Methanol is a harmful substance that needs to be handled and stored safely, so these islands would have to find a way to do this in the safest way possible. To learn about the risks of flammable liquids like methanol, it might be worth reading this blog post by Storemasta, for example. As well as storing it, these islands need to be able to compensate for emissions from the long-haul transport, 170,000 such clusters would be needed. They could be placed along shorelines near the equator, in particular Indonesia, northern Australia and Brazil, areas that have lots of sunlight, small waves and few hurricanes. If 1.5% of the world’s oceans was used for solar methanol farms, they could offset global fossil fuel emissions altogether.

This vision, however, is not without its challenges. Electrolysing seawater creates unwanted chlorine, so the researchers suggest desalinating the water before use. Carbon dioxide can be harvested from seawater, its concentration here is 125 times higher than in air, but it requires heating or acidification. Electrodialysis, which effectively acidifies one part of a solution, could be a practical extraction method. Moreover, to be economically viable, each island cluster can’t cost more than $90 million (70 million). At that rate it would be projected to cost $990,000,000,000,000 (nearly 1 quadrillion dollars).

The most challenging part, however, might be the catalytic methanol production. Current copper. zinc, aluminium catalysts require high pressures and temperatures. But if temperatures get too high, hydrogen and carbon dioxide can react to form unwanted carbon monoxide. Microstructured reactors and more selective nickel, gallium catalysts might alleviate these problems, but they still need to be tried and tested.

A lot of questions remain, such as whether these technologies could be combined in the way the scientists suggest, and what the best practical design for these facilities might be.

The Drawdown EcoChallenge is a fun and social way to learn about and take action on the 100 climate solutions featured in the seminal work of Paul Hawken “Drawdown.”

From April 4-25, individuals and teams from around the world will take part in simple daily activities to reduce their carbon footprints and delve into the world’s most substantive solutions to global warming. At the end of the Challenge, the teams with the most points will win great prizes, including copies of Drawdown and a one-hour video session with Paul Hawken!

The EcoChallenges are broken down into these sections (with an added note of current participants):

LAND USE (1260)

ELECTRICITY GENERATION (1751)

FOOD (3156)

WOMEN AND GIRLS (1392)

BUILDINGS AND CITIES (1598)

TRANSPORT (1814)

MATERIALS (2094)

Executive Director of Drawdown, Hawken states “All of life is comprised of self-organizing systems and the Drawdown EcoChallenge is exactly that—people coming together to share, learn, support, imagine, and innovate for a better world. We are honored to be a part of this significant and brilliant initiative.”

Biocarbon Engineering, headed by CEO Lauren Fletcher is a company seeking to plant 1 BILLION trees every year using drone technology. By mapping out a grid in deforested regions, a single operator can control and automate up to 15 drones which can put in roughly 360 current-standard man hours of tree planting each day. Each drone precisely propels down biodegradable seedpods that are designed to enhance germination success. With their research and development they are looking to overcome varied challenging environments, manage large-scale projects and utilize their drone technology for precision planting to help restore entire ecosystems for the planet.

Designer Daan Roosegaarde has installed the “largest smog vacuum cleaner in the world” in Rotterdam to help improve the city’s air quality. The seven-meter-tall structure is designed to create a pocket of clean air in its vicinity, offering a respite from hazardous levels of pollution.

According to the designer, it processes 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour – removing ultra-fine smog particles and pumping out clean air using no more electricity than a water boiler. “The Smog Free Tower produces smog-free bubbles of public space, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air for free,” said a statement from Roosegaarde.

Roosegaarde‘s Smog Free Tower was unveiled on 4 September 2015 at Vierhavensstraat 52, following a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project.

Eden currently has projects in 4 countries, with 139,897,936 trees planted over 1,398,979 workdays created with 1176 members as of September 2017!

The destruction of healthy forest systems causes so many different problems. Trees provide a habitat for animals, purify water sources, control flooding and erosion and help to replenish the soil with nutrients needed for farming. When farmers can’t grow anything their farms fail and they have no option but to move to the overcrowded cities looking for work. Often they have to resort to selling themselves or their families into slavery just to survive.

Eden has started by hiring the local villagers to plant trees. This gives them a decent income so they can provide for their families again. As the reforestation effort goes on, healthy forests begin to emerge and all the negative effects of deforestation begin to disappear.

Let us welcome the “OBRIST C-Transformer.” It is a machine that founder Frank Obrist says “will help nature do what nature does best. Just a little bit faster. For our future.”

Although the machine is in prototype, the team has offered details on how it will operate: “Navigating through the forest, the OBRIST C-Transformer will char trunks of old trees and dig the biochar into the forest soil, binding its carbon. This very fertile soil will become the nursery for fresh tree seeds to that new vegetation can immediately start to grow. It will also have the capability to plant new trees within the fertile soil that is created.

Obrist has stated that they work closely with permaculture experts and scientists who continuously make sure that the natural balance of the environment is maintained. He says they also use a “thrice-conducted spiral route” for the OBRIST C-Transformer that will ensure every area will only be prepared and processed once every 45 years. They offer a video explanation and further details to answer some of our immediate questions.

Go through their “choose-your-own-adventure” style FAQ section and start the conversation by sharing your ideas! They are openly admitting that there are some issues still needing to be resolved. You can also check out input from other people.

Check out this project online and decide how you would like to get involved. Watch over, support the OBRIST C-Transformer Crowdfunding project that seeks to protect our world and humanity.

Stand For Trees. Think of it as a global, grassroots intervention to halt deforestation.

Stand For Trees empowers everyday citizens – all of us – to take direct action to protect endangered forests and reduce the impacts of climate change.

Every time you buy a Stand For Trees Certificate, you help local forest communities around the world keep a specific forest standing and prevent a tonne of CO2 from entering the earth’s atmosphere.

You buy a Stand For Trees Certificate — a unique, high-quality, verified carbon credit that protects a specific endangered forest and offsets a tonne of CO2 from entering the earth’s atmosphere. Because of your purchase, forests are left standing to do what they do best — store carbon, produce oxygen, provide habitat, and support local communities.

Stand For Trees Certificates are high-quality verified carbon credits based on the proven REDD+ model and meet the rigorous standards set by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), each of which is a Verified Carbon Unit (VCU) issued by VCS. Further, all Stand for Trees projects have attained or are committed to attaining verification to the Climate Community and Biodiversity Alliance standard, a partnership of leading NGOs that includes CARE, The Nature Conservancy, and The Rainforest Alliance. The credits are registered on the world’s largest environmental registry services provider, Markit, and meet Code REDD’s peer-reviewed international Code of Conduct.

What if we all stood up for trees and saved a tonne? The term ‘tonne’ represents a metric ton – a unit of measurement equal to approximately 2,205 pounds or 1,000 kilograms. That’s a lot of CO2 that would otherwise be released into air, contributing to the man-made greenhouse gases that are accumulating and accelerating climate change in our lifetimes.

ReTree (verb): the act of replenishing the earth’s tree supply to help reverse climate change.

The mission of ReTree is to inspire people to help reverse climate change, one tree at a time. ReTree wants to plant 1 million trees in 2017. And to accomplish this mission, ReTree will double the number of trees their donors plant for the entire year.

Our world is home to more than three trillion (3,000,000,000,000) trees! While that might seem like a large number, each day more than two and a half million (2,500,000) trees are destroyed. This constant and ongoing destruction has contributed (along with fossil fuel emissions) to a major issue for our planet: climate change.

When it happens naturally, as it did for millions of years, tree loss is a normal part of the cycle of life. A tree dies and another one grows. Now, with man’s interference and the loss of trees happening at an alarming rate, our planet can’t breathe. It was never designed to handle all that we’re putting it through. Climate change being at the top of the list.

Reducing factory and auto emissions might be the first thing you think of when tackling this global issue. Guess what? We don’t need fancy gadgets or millions invested in new technologies to fight climate change. There’s a simpler way to remove carbon dioxide from the air: trees!

Trees absorb CO2 from the air as they grow. Using energy from the sun, they turn the carbon captured from the CO2 molecules into building blocks for their trunks, branches, and foliage. This is all part of the carbon cycle and ReTree has created the simplest way to increase the number of trees and help reverse climate change. Other brands are getting involved too; Loveplugs have announced there will be 10 trees planted for every order their store takes. This is a great way to get involved for anyone who wants to help but can’t plant trees themselves for whatever reason. Make an order with them and you are basically planting ten trees!

Now multiply these results by thousands and millions of trees! We can’t stop climate change, but together we can make an incredible impact, one tree at a time.

The team at Earth Conscious Films aims to raise awareness to issues like our broken food system. This same team helped bring together the documentary “GMO OMG” and now has a new documentary film “The Need to GROW” which is still being funded. They are passionate about this project because virtually every environmental condition can be mitigated with healthy soils together with the decentralizing and localizing of our food system. Spreading awareness will have a huge part to play in ensuring we protect the environment for future generations to continue growing a healthy food supply. That is why this film holds great importance.

Visit http://www.theneedtogrow.com/ for more information and their sizzle reel for the film which is now needing funding for their post-production. Support their cause by helping fund their project: https://www.gofundme.com/theneedtogrow also follow them and their story on IG @TheNeedToGrow

If some 70% of the Earth’s topsoil crucial for growing food is gone, we’ve got to do something about it as a world!